Blade: The Art of Gore

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Blade: The Art of Gore

Though it's all stuff we've seen before, Blade: Trinity wraps its story in a convincing, highly atmospheric package. View Slideshow After centuries of freelance work, vampires are incorporating. In the new film Blade: Trinity, vampires have built out offices in a sleek downtown building, enacted a strategic plan and started a program for temp labor. Call it Vampires, Inc. – even compared to Enron, this is a bloodsucking corporation.

If the vampires are getting down to business, so too is Blade: Trinity a film that takes itself very seriously. There's no winking at the camera, none of the spoofiness that has become one of the genre's standard elements. Instead, the film pours its considerable resources into creating carnage.

Blade: Trinity, the third installment in the Marvel-inspired superhero series, was written and directed by David Goyer, who also penned the first two Blade flicks. Goyer may be as bloodthirsty as any of his villains: Blade: Trinity has a skyrocketing body count and all kinds of gore. But Goyer's violence is anything but sloppy – this is a film that is meticulously choreographed and skillfully adrenalized.

Other than being set in the contemporary world, the film picks up where the two original Blade films left off. Our hero, the half-vamp, half-human Blade (Wesley Snipes), is a dedicated vampire-killing machine. At the end of one mission, Blade is lured into a trap and kills a "familiar," a kind of personal assistant for vampires.

The vampire Danica (a razor-tongued Parker Posey) captures that murder on videotape, and soon Blade's face is splashed across the covers of the tabloids. The FBI finds Blade – he's with his mentor and protector Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) – and captures him.

That's when Blade discovers that he's not the only vampire fighter in town. The Nightstalkers – a gang of young, hot, anti-vampire activists, including Hannibal (Ryan Reynolds) and Abigail (Jessica Biel) – rescue Blade and pledge to help in the battle against the bloodsuckers.

Among Blade: Trinity's new elements: the arrival of the grandpappy of all vampires (played by Dominic Purcell), and the articulation of the vampires' master plan. Goyer illustrates this "final solution," which involves humans and shrink-wrap, in gory, nightmarish fashion.

The battles in Blade: Trinity are more graphic than in either Blade or Blade II. Blade's newfangled tools would likely blow Bram Stoker's mind. Armed with silver bullets, UV-radiating lasers and arrows that can make a hard left around a corner, Blade's gang turns hundreds of vampires into spectacular skeletal ash.

These spontaneously combusting vampires and Blade: Trinity's narrative structure seem lifted from video games. Goyer uses what amounts to cut scenes – where characters are introduced and the plot is advanced – to set up the film's very elaborate action sequences. These action montages, the meat of the movie, are fueled by testosterone and dark, throbbing urban music by RZA, from Wu-Tang Clan.

Goyer's not afraid of calling in useful clichés. In one scene, Blade's gang walks in a slow-mo, badass strut, muscles bulging. In another, Blade chases Dracula through crowded city streets, with a final leap from one rooftop to the next. Goyer even figures out how to sneak in a shower scene with Biel (she rinses a gallon or so of blood down the drain).

Though it's all stuff we've seen before, Blade: Trinity wraps its story in a convincing, highly atmospheric package. While it's certainly not the smartest film at the multiplex, Blade: Trinity is tightly woven and efficiently told. Goyer keeps things moving so quickly that we are denied even a second to think about the movie's sillier, more implausible elements.

Blade: Trinity doesn't necessarily betray its comic-book roots, though it plays more like a futuristic martial arts film. But the film has little to do with the Marvel comics, and in fact the two creators of the Blade comic books, Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, aren't even mentioned in the film's 41-page production note packet.

Maybe that's when you know a superhero franchise has arrived: Blade: Trinity feels confident enough to stand alone, never looking back at its humble, pulpy roots.